“That’s the story so far as the picture tells it. But we know what happens next. Dr. Johnson puts the manuscript into one of those big pockets of his, goes out, and in a short time returns with sixty pounds—the price he has received for the book by which Oliver Goldsmith is best known—the famous Vicar of Wakefield.”
“And perhaps if Dr. Johnson hadn’t taken it, it would never have been published at all?” Betty suggested.
“Very likely,” agreed Godmother. “Well, now that you’ve seen Dr. Johnson’s house, we’ll go and look at the inn in which he and Goldsmith often sat.”
They crossed the little Square, and found themselves almost at once in Wine Office Court.
“Unluckily Goldsmith’s house has gone, but here is the Cheshire Cheese, one of the oldest inns in London, for it was old, when Johnson and Goldsmith used to come here.”
They stepped then into the quaintest of taverns! It was dark, with low ceilings and sanded floors, and when they had looked at everything and seen the chair pointed out as Dr. Johnson’s, Betty could scarcely believe they were in modern London.
“I understand now why we don’t need ‘the magic’ to see a good deal of London as it was in the eighteenth century!” she remarked. “There’s quite a lot of it left.”
“Much more than most people know about, because only a few take the trouble to discover it hidden away behind modern buildings,” Godmother returned.
“Is there any other place left in Fleet Street that Johnson used to go to?” Betty asked. “You said he was always walking about here.”